The revolution now occurring in how journalism is done, and who is doing it, gives hope that the wall of denial about vaccine injury will crumble sooner rather than later.

Here's why: The top-down journalism hierarchy has a natural affinity for the top-down public health hierarchy, and every other hierarchy that makes Big Journalism feel smug and important and wealthy. That was on display in spades last Sunday on Meet the Press, where David Gregory thought it was just fine to ask Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian whether he ought to be arrested for helping Edward Snowden tell the NAA's secrets while avoiding Bradley Manning's fate of being tortured in the U.S. Military Justice System.

Don't be bitter, David.

"To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn't you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?" Gregory asked. Greenwald replied it was "pretty extraordinary that anybody who would call themselves a journalist would publicly muse about whether or not other journalists should be charged with felonies."

Not so extraordinary, really. Gregory and company love the perks of all-access journalism, as in this classic moment when Gregory and Karl Rove danced around each other at a Washington correspondents' dinner in 2007, dancing "while Iraq burns," as this disrespectful site captioned it.

Why shouldn't you, Mr. Gregory, be ashamed for cozying up to the folks who led us into a stupid war? Not a question David Gregory is going to even dance around -- he's on record saying what a good job he and other journalists did in the runup to the Iraq war. Yikes.

When it comes to vaccines, autism, and this unprecedented generation of sick kids, what you see is a similar attempt to suppress the bottom-up reality of first-hand observation and unpleasant information in general. A recent study that found the HPV vaccine effective was reported in the press without, as far as I can tell, anyone noting that the vaccine has just been suspended in Japan. Too many girls are describing long-lasting pain after the shot, a tipoff to the neurological and immune damage that the mainstream press is never going to report. But it's only happening when the same vaccine is given in Japan, apparently.

A New York Times piece on Maurice Hilleman last month, the "modest Merck scientist" and "forgotten pioneer" of the MMR vaccine, omitted the whistleblower lawsuit that alleges the mumps portion -- the one Hilleman came up with -- doesn't, er, actually work, and that Merck committed fraud by claiming it does. Instead we are treated to more on Andy Wakefield spreading the measles virus. Actually, the worthless MMR is causing mumps outbreaks! Just like Merck's chickenpox vaccine is causing shingles cases! As my old pal Mark Benjamin would put it, there's your lead right there.

But times are changing. Information wants to be free, and it has a lot of avenues of escape and venues offering refuge. The idea that all this information can stay bottled up, and that people will only believe it if NBC or the NYT report it, is fading fast. In fact, one reason that Snowden went to the Guardian was because the Times sat on its last big scoop about national security for more than a year, and only wrote about it after its reporter put it in a book that was about to be published.

Similarly, no big media outlet has reported in depth -- in fact, almost no one has reported at all -- on the explosive mumps whistleblowers' lawsuit except AOA, from which the details then spread far and wide. Last month the Justice Department put Merck on notice in a formal filing that it is taking the allegation seriously, too.

It's great to be with you in this new media world, where the facts, and not dancing fools like David Gregory and the Times, are what matter. We will prevail.

The same Pete Doshi who wrote in BMJ May 16 2013 marketing diseases marketing vaccines that CDC vaccine officials, enabled by medically ignorant media, are "disease mongering" vaccine sales people. The BMJ methodically demolishes CDC claims of safety and effectiveness of flu shot, and calls out Anthony Fauci as a blatant, hypocritical liar. Very good reading.

Now NYT is splashing Doshi as a good guy.

I believe that after many false starts and dashed hopes, the paradigm shift is happening. Orac's mob is practically speechless at BMJ's searing rip on CDC vaccine officials- and now the author of that article is the toast of NYT. Must suck to be a pharma whore right about now. The first one who rolls over will probably get off with a lighter sentence or even immunity-the rush for the exit could start at any moment.

I hope Dan won't mind if I put in a plug for one of my favorite books, _Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press_, Kristina Borjesson, editor. (Borjesson was fired from CBS for her work on the crash of TWA 800.)

I had seen Karl Rove in this skit before, just yukking it up, but didn't realize that David Gregory was backing him up. Literally, and journalistically.

I hope you, Dan Olmsted, will be able to teach journalistic ethics someday. You can put some of your colleagues in "good" and "bad" columns as examples for your students. The lists will have their parallel counterparts with the good/bad doctors, elected officials, etc.

"Smarmy" perfectly describes the St. Paul news anchor who for two consecutive nights reassured the populace about vaccine safety by reciting CDC talking points on the biased DeStefano antigen study.

Folks, these news anchors have email addresses. We all can be sending them critiques of the flawed and fraudulent studies they reference and recite without knowing a darn thing about what they're saying.

Sorry, there was a loose pronoun - I did intend to say that it was the government that wanted to introduce legislation. But the Guardian are very much behind the sinister Leveson Inquiry, which is a front for protecting certain interests, also as I have shown with roots in the UK Department of Business.

Sponge Bob has more reality based episodes than anything one can find in newspapers, the internet(except the independent blogs) or television. I laughed my head off this week as the reporters on CNN speculated as to where Snowden was.(I actually believe the NSA and CIA know exactly where he is) but for some reason(unknown to us) they continue to play hide and seek on air, Maybe Josh's altered reality world is not so different from the one we live in.
Maurine

The facts lie all around them. There ARE major stories on vaccine safety issues literally dropping on their desks.

But these folks prefer to be smarmy know-it-alls instead of truth seekers.

*************************

I agree, MAJOR stories abound about lots of things Big Pharma that peddles. From their poisonous vaccines and drugs, to the false information that they knowingly propagate about things like "big bad cholesterol", or a "big bad sun" that's supposed to be so harmful.

There are thousands of main stream journalists in this world , and none of them are bothering to challenge ANY of this stuff ????

In my opinion, that doesn't make them know-it-alls. That makes them accomplices.

"It is, of course, an issue if they are doing things they are not meant to. In the UK they have been trying to introduce legislation to legalise the situation and have been caught on the hop"

I am always amazed at how easily the media and politicians in the U.K. and U.S. seem to work in tandemn .. on a whole host of issues .. where the "truth" of the subject doesn't seem to be the their top priority.

As Winston Churchil said:

"We can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all other possibilities".

Whether it is the MMR .. or .. invading Iraq .. the consequences of both countries .. made stronger by their acting in collusion with one another .. may eventually prove disastrous.

It should be mentioned that the Guardian are in many ways more hypocritical and despicable than anyone. I am also rather against leaking not least because governments mostly do this to their advantage. It is, of course, an issue if they are doing things they are not meant to. In the UK they [the government] have been trying to introduce legislation to legalise the situation and have been caught on the hop. Of course, they can spy on anyone legally with a court order as things are (the criteria are very broad at least in the UK), so in some ways it is quite academic.

This is an aside from the issue of whether the MSM are losing credibility and Dan is quite right that a generation is coming along who won't swallow it.

I'm sure Rove and the like leak to Gregory and even tell him the truth often enough to keep him hooked in and, of course, flatter him and gossip with him and tickle him under the chin and stroke his ears....(God, that sounds so good, where do I sign up?)

Last week I saw James Kallstrom (think TWA 800)talking to some CNN guy whose name I can't remember and in the discussion, which wasn't going that well for Kallstrom, Kallstrom says to the guy, "You KNOW me." As in, "I wouldn't lie to you, man with the beautiful ears." That did seem to work. Dismal, eh?